Geithner Urges Passage of Financial Reform

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner urged Congress on Wednesday to adopt the Obama administration’s proposals to overhaul financial regulations, warning that the system was still fraught with the same problems that helped to create last year’s crisis.

“The flaws in our financial system and regulatory framework that allowed this crisis to occur, and in many ways helped cause it, are still in place,” Mr. Geithner said in prepared remarks to the House Financial Services Committee. “We may disagree over details of how to best fix those flaws, but that cannot mean we do not act.”

Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads the committee, said legislative hearings on specific pieces of the bill would begin next week.

In testimony on Capitol Hill, Mr. Geithner sought to shore up support for financial reform. Momentum behind the administration’s proposals has flagged recently as shocks of the credit crisis faded, Americans grew weary of big government interventions and financial lobbyists pushed back against some of the plans, including creating a new agency to protect consumers.